_P._ You may hereby be assured, that either the King and Parliament were very much overseen in choosing such officers perpetually for the time being to be judges in a trial at the common-law, or else that Sir Edward Coke presumes too much to appropriate all the judicature, both in law and equity, to the common lawyers; as if neither lay persons, men of honour, nor any of the Lords spiritual who are the most versed in the examination of equity and cases of conscience, when they hear the statutes read and pleaded, were fit to judge of the intention and meaning of the same. I know that neither such great persons, nor bishops, have ordinarily so much spare time from their ordinary employment, as to be so skilful as to plead causes at the bar; but certainly they are, especially the bishops, the best able to judge of matters of reason, that is to say (by Sir Edward Coke’s confession) of matters, except of blood, at the common-law. _L._ Another sort of felony, though without manslaughter, is robbery; and by Sir Edward Coke (_3 Inst. p. 68_), defined thus: Robbery by the common-law is a felony committed by a violent assault upon the person of another, by putting him in fear, and taking away from him his money, or other goods of any value whatsoever. _P._ Robbery is not distinguished from theft by any statute. _Latrocinium_ comprehendeth them both, and both are felony, and both punished with death. And therefore to distinguish them aright is the work of reason only. And the first difference, which is obvious to all men, is that robbery is committed by force or terror, of which neither is in theft. For theft is a secret act, and that which is taken by violence or terror, either from his person, or in his presence, is still robbery. But if it be taken secretly, whether it be by day or night, from his person, or from his fold, or from his pasture, then it is called theft. It is force and fraud only, that distinguisheth between theft and robbery; both which are, by the pravity only of the intention, felony in their nature. But there be so many evasions of the law found out by evil men, that I know not, in this predicament of felony, how to place them. For suppose I go secretly, by day or night, into another man’s field of wheat, ripe and standing, and loading my cart with it I carry it away: is it theft or robbery? _L._ Neither, it is but trespass. But if you first lay down the wheat you have cut, and then throw it into your cart, and carry it away, then it is felony. _P._ Why so?